AP English Literature & Composition Literary Movements at Lightspeed

In this lesson, our instructor Rebekah Hendershot, goes over the Literary Movements at Lightspeed. You’ll learn what a literary movement is, why they matter, and how you can use them as “cheat sheets” on the exam. Some of the major movements covered include: Metaphysical, Augustans, Romantics, Symbolists, Modernists, Harlem Renaissance, and Postmodernists. For each movement, Rebekah explains the when, where, what to look for, and gives examples. The lesson concludes with a list of other poets to read, such as Dickinson, Frost, and Auden, and a great resource to find addition information on poetry.

Literary Movements at Lightspeed

What is a Literary Movement?

A literary movement is a group of writers who have something in common—a period in time, a set of literary aims, a region of the world, etc. Some writers accept being grouped, or even encourage it; some actively reject it.

Why Do Literary Movements Matter?

A knowledge of literary movements is like a cheat sheet for the exam.

If you know that a poem or prose work is part of a movement, you often know what to look for in terms of form, content, language, and meaning. You know when and (probably) why the author was writing. You have context.

Knowing a work’s context can also give you great buzzwords—it tells you what kinds of terms the reader is looking for in your essay, and what sort of answers you need on the multiple-choice section.

The Metaphysicals

When/Where:17th-century England, mostly.

What is it?Poetry that breaks with the Renaissance tradition. These poems are often introspective meditations on love, death, God, human frailty, etc. Famously difficult and obscure.

What to look for:Wit, irony, paradox, and loads of style. Look for big analogies and conceits, striking rhymes, and lots of experiments with line length, stanza shape, and other elements of form.

What to look for:Love, sex, suicide, fear, failure, autobiography, ambivalent or violent opinions about family members, and above all anything that would make 1950s suburbanites squirm and grow reticent.

Emily Dickinson – Near-isolated American poet of the mid-19th century. Powerful but idiosyncratic. “Because I could not stop for death”; “I heard a fly buzz when I died”; Tell all the truth but tell it slant”.

Robert Frost – A traditional poet during the modernist period; locally colored poems (mostly about Vermont) with deep philosophical undercurrents. “Birches”; “Death of the Hired Man”; “Mending Wall”; “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Adrienne Rich – Major American feminist and political poet, mid-20th century to present. Major focus on the role of the poet in society. “Diving into the Wreck”; “North American Time”; “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”; “Miracle Ice Cream.”

Seamus Heaney – Irish poet, late 20th century. Uses rural imagery to tackle questions of identity such as what it means to be Irish and what it means to be a poet. “Digging”; “The Harvest Bow”.

Literary Movements at Lightspeed

Lecture Slides are screen-captured images of important points in the lecture. Students can download and print out these lecture slide images to do practice problems as well as take notes while watching the lecture.

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This book includes five full length practice exams with all questions answered and explained. It includes a review of test topics covering details test takers need to know, such as poetry,prose fiction, and drama. It also includes sample student essays with critiques of their strengths and weaknesses, as well as a detailed glossary defining 175 literary and rhetorical terms.

This book is a reprint of the Shakespeare Head Press edition, and it presents all the plays in chronological order in which they were written in an easy to read format. It also includes Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as his longer poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.

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